Interaction

What Have I Been Doing?

Slacking off, mostly. Well that and working on other units. Such is life, such is uni. But I am quite happy with the work I've done this week! Next week is looking dodgy again, however. A doctor's appointment, chemistry lecture, VR lecture, and second covid-19 vaccine dose tomorrow. A full day of working on my second most important lab report for chemistry on Tuesday, hopefully squeezing in a ~30 minute pre-lecture for computer science as well. A computer science lecture, a game design lecture, and a chemistry pre-lab on Wednesday. A computer science tutorial, chemistry lab, and scramble to finish the lab report before its due at midnight on Thursday. Then a 3 hour prac and a 3 hour drive to Launceston on Friday, as well as a family event on Sunday, I am booked solid. Thankfully next week focusses on presentation, so it shouldn't be too mentally taxing, just a bit time consuming.

Enough whining about time, what's new in the game? A fair bit! We have three new moves, a dash, placing a block beneath your feet, and shooting a fireball. Each of these is fairly substantial, and there are some other bits worth talking about to, so I think I'll break this into different sections. 

The Dash

The dash is in and feeling nice. It took some time to properly implement, mostly related to shenanigans in Update vs FixedUpdate, but its now a simple boost of speed in the direction you're currently looking, with the addition of locking your y position, so long as you're midair. It'll need some fine tuning, but it feels snappy and responsive right now I think. Furthermore, the dash has a cooldown on it, which currently isn't communicated at all, but I am mulling over ways to do this - some combination of UI and sound cues I imagine. 

Also worth noting is that I've implemented sandstone blocks which extend the player's dash if they dash through them! It took ages to get the blocks to be solid, but also not briefly stop the player when they were dashing through. I got there, though! Also, the sand blocks are setup so that they will respawn after a customisable amount of time, making it so that you can't brick puzzles or get yourself stuck. 

The Block

Placing the block beneath your feet was comparatively easy to implement, and worked pretty much from the word go. It cancels all your horizontal and vertical velocity when you use it, so it doubles as a sort of dead stop, and a general purpose jump extender/heightener. The block slowly fades out of existence, and you have to wait a little moment after its gone before placing another, to prevent infinitely high or long jumps. This timing also isn't communicated to the player, but will be eventually.

Also worth noting is that the player can indeed dash through the block they place down, and the boost to their dash is much more potent than other sand blocks in the world. I made it this way so that placing a sand block and dashing through it can take you further than jumping, dashing, placing a block, jumping, and dashing again. However, it feels a little ridiculously big right now, and so I think I'll have to do some retuning of everything. 

The Fireball

The Fireball was the first and I think nicest looking new move I've added, and is also the simplest in terms of code. Its a fireball that travels for a little bit before deleting itself (the distance isn't currently well communicated, I might try something with fades? maybe flashing?), and deletes itself if it hits anything. 

I've also added some targets, which are set up to detect fireballs hitting them and then do something. The current implementation works, but is very janky, I think I'll rework it with the Unity event system. 

The Miscellaneous

In miscellaneous details, I've actually made the level that I blocked out last week, and it feels pretty much exactly how I wanted it to. Its missing text prompts / information, but that won't be too hard to put in. 

There are some very basic particle emitters attached to triggers that give the player access to their powers when they touch them. I'll probably texture these as a magic scroll at some point, but I intend to keep the different coloured particles, I think they add some style. 

And finally, falling into the void now has you falling into some basic triggers that will teleport you back to before the jump. It's a simple system and really easy to make into unique shapes because of how I've set up the prefab. 

The Feedback

...once i got into the flow of it, it was very satisfying to chuck a sand block down mid air and zoop through it. having said that i think the controls are a little counter intuitive, mostly for dashing, since i found that moving to the left, it took me a while for it to occur to me i still needed to press the right arrow to dash, and at times i found myself like. double tapping the a or d key as if that would activate the dash aha. maybe as a holdover from minecraft or something, even though the sprinting isnt really that similar. though i think my problems with the choice of using the arrow keys for the abilities might just be from the lack of familiarity, cause in theory i actually like that choice since its unique and gives you room to easily use both hands. also the easter egg was excellent

I'm very happy to here this feedback, as it tells me that I'm hitting the mark I was aiming for. Satisfying controls and enjoyment of comboing abilities together! The tester also raised a very good point, in that the dash is currently mapped to the right arrow key, which feels counterintuitive if you're moving left. I'll have to think about how to address this, I'll mull it over in the week to come, but I think a solution might be just not using the arrows keys for the special moves, and instead using something like O P [ ] or similar. 

G'day Matthew. Looking back at the level blocking and prior conversation, I can definitely see this game coming to life now! Controls feel nice, only problem I felt I encountered was the reset boundary. I felt like if it was placed a tad bit lower there'd be more room to make a higher jump and block placement for some MLG like plays. But overall there's nothing to criticism regarding current game play or mechanics from my end

This tester encountered an issue I was expecting with how quickly I made the reset boundaries (what send you back to before a jump if you fail it). There are definitely times when you might like to fall partially into a pit and then climb back out with the block ability, for example, and so placing the boundaries a bit lower is high on the priority list! 

What's Next in the Pipeline?

We've got lots to do! Worth noting is that I've given up on redoing the jump script, going by feel is how I'll be going from now on.

The foremost issues I need to tackle, in no particular order, are: 

• Revamping how the targets work 
• Fixing a small issue with very briefly clipping into the floor if landing at a high speed 
• Making the reset boundaries more forgiving
• Tackling the "jumping and landing on the very edge of a platform" edge case (Trim the hedge of the edge landing edge case)
• Fine tuning the jump, especially in relation the dash ability and how far you can get using each. 

And the foremost new features I intend to add are:

• Custom sprites and animations, including spell scrolls, visual effects for using different abilities, and cues for when abilities can be used
• Some sound effects
• a wider moveset, including a move that makes you slam to the ground (this might let you bounce off sand blocks, or maybe crash through sand blocks and bounce off another type of block), and more that I am yet to fully conceive

Lots to do, lots to do. See you next week!